The rectangular bale baler is widely used in the collection and bundling of straw and herbage in rural areas and meadow. Knotter is the core component of the rectangular bale baler. The main function of the knotter is to finish several motions including rope-gripping, knot-winding, rope-hooking, rope-cutting and knot-tripping, and form a fast knot at the end of two ropes to prevent the straw bale from loosening. The bundled straw bale with high density is convenient to transport and store, and is beneficial to comprehensive utilization of biomass energy like straw.
At present, D-knotter and C-knotter are widely used in the rectangular bale baler. In the world, some manufacturers of rectangular bale baler have mature design and manufacture technology of knotter and invention patent of knotter, such as CLAAS company and Rasspe Systemtechnik company in Germany, and John Deer company in the United States. The buyout of patent right of European patent named for EP1532859(A1) is implemented by John Deer company, which involves a single knot type of D-knotter invented by Rotole David Vincent. European patent number EP1745691(A1) invented by Schumacher Friedrich-Wilhelm improved C-knotter. In China, the manufacturers of the rectangular bale baler heavily rely on imparting above-mentioned knotter to produce the rectangular bale baler, which leads to hold at high price of the knotter and almost monopolizes the market of the rectangular bale baler. In addition, these knotters belong to integrated device, which have the features of complex spatial structure, large manufacture difficulty, and high requirements of assembly accuracy. Moreover, it is a shortcoming that it needs to replace the entire knotter if a part is broken.
Chinese patent number 201110001685.8 K named for anthropopathic double-fingered knotter was invented on the basis of the improvement of D-knotter, which may be installed on the main shaft of the after body of the rectangular bale baler. The anthropopathic double-fingered knotter can simulate double fingers of hand to grip the rope carried by the rope-conveying mechanism, and finish several motions including rope-overlapping, knot-winding, rope-hooking, rope-cutting and knot-tripping. Finally, the anthropopathic double-fingered knotter realizes automatic bundling and knotting of the compacted straw bale. The anthropopathic double-fingered knotter improves the shortcoming of difficult manufacture of the knotter rack, and has simple spatial structure and low cost of manufacture, compared with the other D-knotter.
However, in existing techniques, the knotting driven bevel gear and the rope-gripping driving incomplete bevel gear are devised in the same side of the compound fluted disc of D-knotter, which makes D-knotter have uneven loading, complex space structure, large manufacture difficulty, and high requirements of assembly accuracy; Moreover, the rope can't be directly feed into the rope-gripping groove by the rope-conveying mechanism and the rope head is close to the knifepoint of the rope-cutting knife, so that it is bad for the rope-cutting knife on the cutter arm to cut off the rope; In addition, the point contact between spherical cutter area roller and the grooved cam on the large fluted disc leads to high stress impact in use, which causes heavy abrasion of the grooved cam in long-term use and decreases the service life of the knotter.
Therefore, the knotter driven by double fluted disc was proposed by this patent, and is a kind of automatic knotting device which uses the rope to bundle crop straw or herbage with the shape of rectangular bale. The knotter driven by double fluted disc has the advantages of reasonable structure, easy processing, low cost of manufacturing and reliable knotting, and may solve the problem of subjecting to the imported knotter in the manufacture of the rectangular bale baler in China.